


Feels Bad

by ticketlove



Category: Ticketlove(band)
Genre: Other, el oh el, kihei gets bullied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 22:23:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18040202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ticketlove/pseuds/ticketlove





	Feels Bad

Kihei hits the ground with a hard thud, his tailbone aching from the unexpected crash and his hands scrambling to help take some of the hit. They’re shaking, he knows, scrambling for some kind of give in the tiled floor, and sweaty, too, sticking to the ground, an adaptation that he’s sure would’ve helped his ancient caveman grandfather but does absolutely nothing to help him now. A boy reaches down to grab the front of his shirt and Kihei backs up, as fast as he can go, crawling backwards until his back his the wall and he’s trapped between a bathroom stall and the wall. 

He’s not crying, not yet. Crying usually makes it worse, usually elicits another punch, another kick, whatever they determine he deserves on that given day, a game of chance, a roulette of his own eternal torment. One boy leans against the wall to Kihei’s side and the other stands in front of him, leaning over him to stop him from leaving. Behind them, two girls stand by his backpack. One holds her phone in her hand, laughing, and the other goes through Kihei’s things, determining if it’s valuable enough to snag for herself. Homework answers? Yes. Kihei’s history notes? Nope. They get balled up and thrown in the closest trash can as Kihei watches. 

He doesn’t peel his eyes away. Kihei doesn’t even know if he would be physically able to, or if they’d let him. “Look at us when we’re talking to you..!” They usually say. “Think you’re better than us?” No, he always says, instantly, a Pavlovian Condition that’s been ingrained in his head from the beginning of elementary school, following him, lurking over him, into his last year of junior high and, he assumes, beyond. 

As he watches the girl grab his phone out of one of his backpack pockets and ‘accidentally’ drop it, cracking the screen, he can see from where he sits (“whoops!” she says, turning to the other girl and laughing) the boy leans down and grabs the butterfly knife out of Kihei’s pocket that he hadn’t noticed was sticking out, or even that it was still in there. Usually he leaves it at home, of course, because he knows he’d get in trouble if a teacher saw it sheathed from across the room, but the others get a pass for stomping on his feet under the desk and throwing his workbook pages out the window. Because that’s all on him. Him for not moving his foot. Him for not grabbing them back. 

“Ha!” The boy yells, and Kihei is broken from his stupor when he hears the metal clash and sees the blade unearthed from its casing, flipped open and exposed. His blood runs cold, instantly, and the shaking goes beyond his hands, going to his arms and his legs, trembling, pitifully, as he realizes just how badly he fucked up. “Did you think you were gonna kill us with this or something?” The boy sounds mocking, angry, accusatory, his voice filled with venom as he spits his words down at Kihei. 

Kihei’s voice gets caught in his throat. “No..!” He says, desperately, he needs to get it out because if he doesn’t he’ll just be hit until he does. He feels his mouth dry, and every “no” he repeats just sounds more and more distant. No. No. No. No. No. He shakes his head. 

The boy that was once leaning against the wall grabs Kihei’s hair and, painfully, pulls him up from where he sits, onto his knees, and tips his head back, stretching his neck out. Kihei feels tears burn in his eyes, but he blinks them back. Breathe in. One. Two. Three. Four. Breathe out. One. Two. Three. Four. These seconds are luxuries, Kihei thinks, and he’s thankful for them. The other boy is still holding the knife. It’s not sharp. Kihei knows it isn’t. He’d never practice with a sharp knife--- he’s still not good at any tricks, and his suspicions are confirmed when the boy grabs his arm and runs the blade against the palm of Kihei’s hand. No skin is broken. 

“Fuckin pussy. Can’t even keep a good knife on him.” The boy snickers. “Bet if I went real hard, I could still kill you with this, though.” Kihei feels the blade of the knife against his neck, cold and thin, but still dull. The thought crosses Kihei’s mind that maybe he wouldn’t mind so much, dying in this stupid bathroom. It would be fitting. Half his life was spent here, after all, hiding out during class, being kicked around after school, just sitting and waiting for time to pass so he could pretend he was out with friends after school and his dads wouldn’t have to worry about the fact that he didn’t have any. 

And it wouldn’t even be his fault. His papa couldn’t be mad at him. His dad wouldn’t be able to blame himself for being a bad father. It would be perfect. 

But the cold blade gets pulled away from his neck with a laugh, and Kihei breathes deeply again. He thinks the worst of it is over, and he can relax, until suddenly there’s a swishing noise and he’s falling forward onto the floor again and he doesn’t even know what happened. 

He looks up. 

The boy that had been previously holding Kihei up now only held a fistful of blonde hair. He let’s go (“Bet it has lice~~!”) and falls to the floor around Kihei. The other boy must’ve swung the knife so hard, so fast that it actually managed to cut through. Kihei’s right hand goes up to his head and he feels his forehead--- his bangs are cut off, all ending bluntly, squared off in random sections from where the knife went through. His other hand goes to grab at the hair that falls to the floor--- HIS hair. 

One of the girls stalks over, laughing, and steps the hand digging on the ground to desperately grab his own hair. She puts the full force of her weight on his hand, and Kihei hears his joints pop (or at least he hopes they’re just popping, and that’s not a bone snapping into) and his hand throbs painfully, unbearable, and he tries to pull away but that just makes everything feel worse. She pivots and twists her foot a little before she pulls back away, and Kihei’s hand flies up to his chest, being cradled and held by his other hand and arm. He prays, silently, for the pain to fade.

Kihei looks across the bathroom again. His bag had been ravaged--- pretty much every pocket dug through, all his folders and papers scattered around, his wallet (which he learned early not to keep money in when he goes to school) was left opened near one of the stalls. “I’m getting bored.” One of the girls says, and the others seem to nod in agreement. “Let’s get outta here.” The boy drops the knife on the ground with a clang and the four of them gather up their stuff to go. As soon as he’s in the clear, Kihei scrambles on his hands and knees to firstly get his wallet, with his bus pass and student ID, from the bathroom stall where it lays. 

A mistake. 

Kihei sits up to look at his wallet once it’s in his hands. He checks, and everything is still in there, as far as he knows, so it’s fine. Suddenly, though, he feels something on his back and his whole body is pushed forward and down, until his neck is against the toilet seat and his face is inches from the water. His hands drop his wallet and scramble to push himself up, but they’re not fast enough and soon his face is submerged. 

It’s cold. It’s always cold. Kihei closes his eyes, pushing them together, scrunching his whole face up, cringing at the thought that this is who he is. He tries to sit up, tried to get away, but he realizes that that’s a foot on his back and the same girl is stepping on him as before, and one of the boys must be holding his head down. No matter how much he pushes himself, no matter how much he flails his arms, there’s nothing he can do. He’s at their mercy. They decide what happens to him. 

And it’s terrifying. 

He can’t breathe. 

He breathes out, letting the air bubbles go to the surface, a cry, a plea, please let me go, please. It’s a few more seconds before the boy does, and Kihei’s head snaps up and he’s gasping for breath, whatever’s left of his bangs dripping wet and water flowing down his chin and onto his uniformed shirt. The moment of relief is nice, but not long, and he’s underwater again momentarily. 

Kihei always read that drowning was one of the worst ways to die. That it was so painful to feel your lungs emptied, to want to breathe in when you know, you know you just can’t. That if you breathe in right now, you’ll die, your lungs will get filled with water and collapse upon themselves and everything that you’ve know, you’ve learned up until that point will be for nothing because your cells will rot and die and your brain will stop its functions without oxygen. And Kihei believes that. He totally understands why everyone says it’s painful. He aches--- his lungs ache, screaming, begging for oxygen that he just can’t give. 

He hears the others laugh. Their voices travel through the water, through to his ears, muffled and distant, but still happy, joyous, genuinely enjoying themselves. Kihei wonders what he did, why he can’t be happy like them, why he was the one cursed to suffer as the blunt of the joke, every time. 

The boy lets go, again, and this time Kihei knows it’s for real because the girl also steps off his back. Hopefully she didn’t leave a footprint, because this was Kihei’s last clean uniform, and they always treat him worse when he looks dirty. “Later, brat!” One of the girls giggles as they leave, finally and the door closes, slams shut, and Kihei learned his lesson. He watches this time, to make sure they’re all gone, that not a single person is left in this room besides himself before he starts crying. 

His aching lungs don’t make it any better. He can barely get enough air when he cries, normally, but now as he feels them desperately scream and no matter how much he breathes it just won’t be enough, it somehow makes everything a little worse. His tears spill into his hands, down his cheeks, on the floor, everywhere, they’re everywhere, mingling with the toilet water still on his face, and his nose runs, too, slick down his face, and when he gasps and chokes he thinks he might taste the snot a little, and he just feels gross. Gross. That’s what he is. 

Kihei feels himself gag. Once. Twice. Three times. Good thing the toilet is so close. He empties his stomach in there, his hands grasping at the seat for support as more and more and more comes up, and Kihei thinks that there must be no limit to it, even when he barely ate at all that day. 

Kihei wants to stay there forever, but he needs to get out before anyone else comes in. It’s almost four, so club activities will be ending and people will be stopping by before they make their way home, so Kihei haphazardly throws all the folders into his bag, and any stray items the girls dug out he puts in a random pocket. The only thing he keeps on him is his phone, shattered. He hits the power button. The screen lights up, still, which is good, because he really doesn’t want to ask his parents for another one when he’s already gone through a few this year. 

“I broke it.” He always says. They always believe him. Yet they’re never even mad. 

Kihei slings his bag over his shoulder and looks in the mirror for the first time since he’s gotten in there. He’s a mess. He would bully himself, too, if he could, he bitterly thinks, laughing to himself. 

His hair is, obviously, tousled and cut, choppy and frizzy, absolutely ruined. It’ll take awhile to grow back. He’ll say he got gum in his bangs, and his papa will probably take him to a salon. Easy enough fix. His eyes, puffy, red, shiny and tearful will eventually go back to normal. It’s just a matter of some time. His uniform is all wrinkled and wet, but there’s not much he can do about it for now. He’ll just dry it when he gets home. Kihei wipes some dried vomit off the corner of his mouth. He missed the bus time for today already, and home is a far walk. It’s closer to the bookstore where his father works, and he could get a ride home, but he would have to explain what happened, why he looks like this, etc etc. 

Kihei takes the long route home.


End file.
